By July 4, 2022, KPT’s secretary wrote a letter, available with Dawn.com, to the Sindh chief secretary and Karachi Commissioner to complain that people were taking over what was formerly called the KPT Employees Housing Society.

He had to use the word ‘formerly’ because in 2020, the then Chief Justice of Pakistan Gulzar Ahmed had made it “crystal clear” in an order that the guardians of the port had no power or authority to lease out, transfer, or sell KPT property or land for housing to its staff.

The court observed that the Karachi Port trustees act on behalf of the government only when it comes to affairs concerning the management of the port. Hence, any KPT united front workers housing society is illegal. The work on the boundary wall was also halted after the court order.

The Keamari DC too said that the construction of the wall around the lagoon has been temporarily halted. He added that a divisional court is set to hear the case again.

“The decision to reassess the case arose when a single-judge bench noted that the divisional bench, responsible for ordering the regularisation of the land for Usman & others and Ari & others, might not be aware of the Supreme Court’s directive to maintain ‘status quo’ on the land,” he explained.

And just as easy as it was to acquire the land, it was easier for it to become bogged down in intra-governmental controversy. Such is the nature of fractured governance in Karachi that what one hand giveth, the other taketh away.

Moreover, the KPT isn’t the only government entity that has staked a claim on the land. One more authority that claims ownership is the Lyari Development Authority (LDA), which is responsible for the development of the area.

The LDA has taken the Board of Revenue to court, arguing that the government could not have allotted land in K-28 phase II as it had no authority in the area. Moreover, the K-28 phase II allotments overlapped with the area designated for LDA’s Hawkesbay Scheme 42. This case has been languishing since 2009.

The ambiguity surrounding this area’s ownership is thus being battled out in several court cases. For the purposes of this article, we had to scour through 74 documents and nine maps (and these were only the documents we were able to uncover).

The more documents you come across, the deeper you can assume the corruption goes. If you ask Amber Alibhai of NGO Shehri — Citizens for a better environment, which fights land grabbers in Karachi’s courts, “Many times, too much documentation is done to convolute the truth.” In any other part of the world, multiple government papers would be markers of veracity. Not so in Karachi.

As our ring binders of government and court records grew fatter, the list of people who would go on the record for this story shrank. No one wants to be quoted when it comes to Hawkesbay K-28, Phase II, Trans Lyari. “A similar development was in process a decade ago, and when I attempted to take pictures, I faced threats,” said Shehzad Sadiq, Director of Forest Operations.

When Dawn GIS mapped out phase II of the K-28 scheme and land allotted to Jokhio as per the District Keamari office, it was found that the plot was not a part of the original boundary of the scheme.

By delineating boundaries based on the constructed wall, it was discovered that Jokhio had relinquished his initial allotment of 313 acres and claimed approximately 600 acres of land as his own.

Sandcastles in the air

Even if Jokhio and Beach City cleared the court circuit, they would have to contend with the Sindh Environment Protection Agency. As it turns out, SEPA has summoned the builder, according to Deputy Director Keamari Kamran Khan, as the housing project has no Environmental Impact Assessment[10] [11] — a document that provides an overview of the existing environmental situation of the project area, reveals potential environmental impacts which can be beneficial and harmful, with suggestions on how to enhance beneficial effects, mitigate or minimise potentially harmful impacts.